Jun 21, 2012

The online fashion website ShowStudio is running an online series called Fashion Fetish as a component to their exhibition Selling Sex. Fashion Fetishincludes performances, fashion films, and essays made solely by women working in fashion. The video "Is My Mind For Me" by Sarah Piantadosi and Ellie Grace Cumming (assistant stylist to Katy England) depicts Sardé Hardie using large shears, to slowly cut off her long black hair.

The film is described as addressing trichophilia, being sexually
aroused by hair (or specifically its subset of being aroused by hair cutting). It depicts a girl taking scissors to her long hair in a Junya Watanabe sweater with "Hymn Eola" by Tonstartssbandht providing the soundtrack. The sexual significance of hair as fetish is obvious, but somehow I just
don't think there is much eroticism in the 2 1/2 minute video, unless you happen to be a trichophiliac.

There is a strong relationship between women and their hair. Hair is often a symbol and tool of feminine sexuality and power. Cutting off one's long locks has paradoxical meanings: it is an act of renunciation of power, submission almost, as well as an act of fearlessness. And hair cutting is an apt action since fetish is about power/powerlessness and presence/absence.

But fetish is also about arousal, that of either the subject or audience. While the camera's eye is operating voyeuristically, it doesn't seduce the viewer. There is no scopic pleasure. And the
actress (who evokes a bit of Kate Moss) shows little emotion. Not fear,
joy, or ecstasy. Things improve a bit when, as she takes the shaver to
her head, her fingers gently touch the crewed cut, and she caresses her scalp.
But when the camera shifts to her toes and the hair gathering on the floor, I think the filmmakers missed the opportunity to have her curl her toes. This one small gesture would have said it all.

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The ShowStudio website provides this essay to contextual the works:

If, historically speaking, a fetish is a manufactured object which has
magical powers, or one that people are irrationally devoted to, fashion
is a veritable fetish-factory of 'It' shoes, 'Now' bags, and garments
that magically propose to make your life indefinably better. On a less
abstract level, fashion has been obsessed with sexual fetishism for
centuries. The subtle constraint of the corset, the snugly-gloved hand, a
shiny boot of leather - all staples of the well-dressed man or woman,
and equally the well-equipped Sado-Masochist. At the turn of the
twentieth century, the Pandora's Box of fashion fetish was blown apart -
from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's proposal of 'rubberwear
for the office' in their seminal London boutique SEX, to Gianni
Versace's sanitised 'Bondage Chic' of 1992, to the power of John
Galliano's 'Sado-Maso' haute couture collection for Christian Dior in
2000, designers articulated the sexual peccadilloes of a select few
across the international catwalks. It's fetish as fashion.

Fashion Fetish hands the power entirely to female fashion professionals,
asking them to address the notion of Fashion Fetish and examining their
individual visions of women. In contrast with Selling Sex, which
reimagines the female relationship with sex, Fashion Fetish focuses on a
woman's relationship with clothing. Although as fashion historian Anne
Hollander has asserted, the nude in art always wears 'The fashion of her
time' - fashion's influence can be felt across the naked flesh, her
body as 'fashioned' as a corseted ball-gown. Dressed or undressed, this
project offers a clear field, a blank canvas and an open mind to a
selection of some of the most important women working in fashion today -
designers, stylists, models and image-makers - inviting them to present
their own interpretation of Fashion Fetish. Their visual
interpretations of the Fashion Fetish theme are then used as the
inspiration for a host of female authors, journalists and cultural
commentators to 'unpick' fetish in a series of accompanying essays, each
written to correspond with a particular piece.